In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Radford Neal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >In article <w0E0a.19826$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, >john v verkuilen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
<>"I am told by my physician that I need a serious operation and have been <>informed that there has not been a fatal outcome in the 20 operations carried <>out by the physician. Does this information give me an estimate of the <>potential postoperative mortality?" The answer is yes, you have about a <>15% chance of postoperative death (given no other information). >This is absurd. I think it must take years of exposure to frequentist >statistics before one can accept the argument offered below for this >statement, in defiance of all common sense. (Of course, the argument >is invalid even in terms of frequentist statistics, but it's the sort >of fallacy that the frequentist viewpoint encourages.) Unfortunately, one typical service course is enough to cause this indoctrination to the alpha-level religion. <>Assuming no observed events, a 95% upper bound on the rate of occurence in n <>trials is 3/n. It's based on the Poisson distribution and the argument is <>summarized on page 50 of the book cited. (I can type it in if you want.) >---------------------------------------------------------------------------- >Radford M. Neal [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Dept. of Statistics and Dept. of Computer Science [EMAIL PROTECTED] >University of Toronto http://www.cs.utoronto.ca/~radford >---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University. Herman Rubin, Deptartment of Statistics, Purdue University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558 . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
